Mendelssohn family
The Mendelssohn family is a German - Jewish scholars, bankers and artists' family, which goes back to the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn.
Family History
The name is a patronymic Mendelssohn, which is derived from Mendel Heymann, the father of Moses Mendelssohn. For generations, the descendants of the two brothers, Joseph and Abraham Mendelssohn Bartholdy Mendelssohn remained connected by the common line of Bankhaus Mendelssohn. The family awareness also comes in a number of consanguineous marriages and as early as 1879 by Sebastian Hensel, a great-grandson of Moses Mendelssohn, published family chronicle expressed. The intellectual and artistic heritage of the family is maintained by the Mendelssohn Society in Berlin -Mitte. The company has opened a permanent exhibition on the history of the Mendelssohn family in a former chapel on the Trinity Cemetery in Berlin -Kreuzberg on November 3, 2013. In the cemeteries before the Halle Gate 28 members of the family are buried.
Four of the six children of Moses Mendelssohn occurred for various reasons to Christianity, other descendants followed in later generations. Through this early conversion, the Mendelssohn offspring were partially no longer classified as Jews in the time of National Socialism and the Holocaust remained, but often not spared from persecution and discrimination. The ratio of the Christian family members to Judaism is different: Participates Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in Jewish friends to celebrate the Sabbath, his father Abraham called the religious rites of Judaism, not seven years after his baptism, " depraved and inexpedient ." Abraham's sister Dorothea finally, only to Protestantism, later converted to Catholicism out of conviction, is concerned about the spiritual welfare of their Protestant and Jewish relatives. A similar position is later represented the Protestant church musician Arnold Mendelssohn, the general baptism of all Jews and a subsequent complete assimilation wants.
Mostly due to the member for most members of the family quest for assimilation, and the family name was changed several times: So Abraham took for himself and his family after the baptism in 1822 the additional surname Bartholdy at the also his brother Jakob Ludwig Salomon, in terms on a connected with the family dairy farm, had taken with his conversion to Christianity, and he responded with rejection when his son Felix turned back his view, this second name in favor of the much more glamorous Mendelssohn. The name was slightly changed by the ennoblement of three branches of the family, that of Mendelssohn, that of Mendelssohn's and that of Mendelssohn ( without a hyphen ). The ennoblement of the banker Otto von Mendelssohn Bartholdy in 1906 called the contradiction of his cousin, the political scientist Albrecht Mendelssohn Bartholdy, out, the, gave a Jewish surnames, especially the honorific to " Mendelssohn " with a title of nobility to be incompatible.
Not everyone who carries the last name " Mendelssohn ", or variations of it must have to do with the family treated here something: Because Moses Mendelssohn was well known due to its role at the Jewish Enlightenment and the name was gladly accepted by various Jews. On the other hand, there is the Mendelssohn family from Jever. From this also several well-known personalities emerged.